Talk:Moses
Well, then what the fuck was he like, per HT? Turtle Fan 08:38, 20 July 2007 (UTC) Not quite as perfect as Judeo-Christendom likes to believe, I guess. HT and Resnick didn't go into much detail. TR 15:19, 20 July 2007 (UTC) Say, how does viewing the past determine that Judaism is the Truth? Jews believe God is even more resistant to observation than Christians do. Turtle Fan 12:39, 22 July 2007 (UTC) Four people look before the Big Bang and all promptly die. When a Jewish cop looks back in time, he speaks to God, and does not die.TR 16:21, 22 July 2007 (UTC) Hmm. And everyone believes him when he says "God told me my religion is right, but if you want to hear it from Him, you'll have to convert"? Shit, some variation of that has been tried more times than you can shake a stick at. About time HT commented on a religion's objective correctness, though. All those dying POVs who "a minute later, found out what they would found out" is less than helpful, though certainly interesting in its own way. Turtle Fan 17:07, 22 July 2007 (UTC) Well, they had the recordings of God talking to him. The time-viewer technology didn't let people pull scams. TR 17:22, 22 July 2007 (UTC) Head of state? Turtle Fan 03:57, 25 January 2009 (UTC) :I guess we can scrape together "tribal leaders" or something like that.....TR 04:15, 25 January 2009 (UTC) ::God ruled the Jews directly in the Penteteuch and in the early parts of the Old Testament, up through Saul. Moses was really just a particularly beloved go-between. Very seldom will you see him making a decision on Israel's behalf on his own, and when he does, like with the water in the rock, more often than not he gets told he'd fucked up. So he wasn't head of government, and he certainly wasn't head of state, since such symbolic authority as he had was delegated by God, with the purpose of glorifying God, and often micro-managed--the uber-detailed instructions on how to build the Tabernacle. ::He was the leader in some vague, general, amorphous sense, so tribal leaders might work; but anything political, that's a stretch. Perhaps in the sense of a diplomat--He delivered God's messages to Pharaoh, much like the ambassador from another worldly king would. Turtle Fan 04:39, 25 January 2009 (UTC) :::I should like to note for the record that TF himself put Moses in the Heads of State category. TR 21:59, 26 January 2009 (UTC) ::::Oh. Yes, the record should show that. ::::Well it certainly wouldn't be the first time I flipflopped on a matter of categorization. Also, my parish is currently making a big push to dispel the stereotype that Catholics don't know Scripture, so I've recently learned all sorts of new things about Moses's role in his people's history. ::::Furthermore, Heads of State has undergone a bit of a redefinition lately. It previously covered just about anyone who held the highest position in his or her society's leadership hierarchy. Since God remained hidden from most Jews, Moses would seem to qualify. Not so under the new definition, which focuses on actual legal authority. Turtle Fan 02:24, 27 January 2009 (UTC) Worldwar I wonder if this type of reference might be better handled as a literary note or something similarly breaking with our "in-universe" writing requirement. I guess Yeager comparing his lifespan to Moses's does give us an idea of how that particular world works, so I'm not vetoing it. :The section reminds me of this. I'm not crazy about that one either but since the article already existed I see no harm in having it there. Ditto Moses. Not sure I'd create a whole new article just to say "Someone thought about this person once." Then again, I guess that's what Charles Lindbergh is. :We always have been a little more generous when it comes to historical figures; we really like to write about historical figures, as you know. ::Indeed, which is why I've never worried about it much. But as we grow, I do wonder if some sort of "usefulness" requirement be applied to historical figures. Or something comparable to the Literary allusions article, which is a solid compromise. TR 18:59, March 29, 2010 (UTC) :::"Historical Figures Whom People Have Thought About in Turtledove's Work." I have to say that in my experience when a category doesn't lend itself to a simple, elegant name, it's almost always because it fails to represent a simple, elegant idea. Which often makes its usefulness suspect. We can try to come up with compelling reasons for such a list. :::As for our growth, it's due mainly to our writing articles about things that most interest us, that jump out and make us want to say "I wish that were an article." Setting constraints on that might put a damper on us. I know for instance that the prospect of writing the Lindbergh article was my one and only reward for slogging through all those horrible Someone Is Stealing pieces; without that, my motivation would have decreased. Turtle Fan 22:54, March 29, 2010 (UTC) :And in that same vein, later in the scene Yeager thinks about how much older he'd be if he went back into cold sleep to return to Earth aboard the Peary. At that point he says to himself "Forget about Moses; look out, Methuselah." If we wanted to fill up the Biblical Characters category. . . . Turtle Fan 18:47, March 29, 2010 (UTC) ::I think Methuselah is frequently referenced, isn't he? TR 18:59, March 29, 2010 (UTC) :::That's the only one I can think of offhand. Turtle Fan 22:54, March 29, 2010 (UTC) A similar thought occured to me when I saw that we now had an article on the Arabian Peninsula. At first I thought about all the story related sub-sections that applied, then I realized they'd all say "The Arabian Peninsula was conquered by X." A single paragraph explaining all that seems more efficient. TR 17:34, March 29, 2010 (UTC) Candidate for deletion? I just read the Moses passage in Homeward Bound, and I'm wondering if it's really enough to base a subarticle on. Moses gets referred to in plenty of other HT works, as do David, Solomon, Daniel, Jesus, etc. There's nothing about the HB reference that's any more significant than a lot of other HT refs; it's just two guys comparing their predicament to that of Moses just before he died. Deleting it would leave the subarticle about "Before the Beginning", which isn't really detailed enough for any in-universe usefulness, and poor justification for keeping an article on him. Having such a subarticle is okay for Buddha, Jesus, and Muhammad, as they have substantial appearances and/or refs in other stories. Moses doesn't personally appear in any HT story like Jesus does in "Under St. Peter's" and Muhammad does in "Departures", and doesn't get an image makeover like "Sword Buddha". HT has never drastically rewritten Moses' biography with specifics provided like "Tabitas & Lord Goliath" in "Occupation Duty", or had the Lizards discuss Moses' life as recounted in the Torah and say "now that's an interesting example of a Big Ugly." There's a reference in ''ItPoME'' to King Solomon that actually does kind of move the plot along, but it's not considered enough for a Solomon article. With no really significant references to Moses in the works of HT, there's not much reason to keep this article. Since there's too much ambiguity that Moses really was a historical figure, all his info might better be set aside for that "list of Biblical allusions" we often talk about.JonathanMarkoff (talk) 02:48, May 14, 2016 (UTC) :I have no problem removing the WW section, but as the authors pointedly tell us that Moses was in fact complete different from what history had led us to believe in BtB, we should not delete. TR (talk) 04:08, May 14, 2016 (UTC) :I agree with TR. The WW section can go, but the BtB should stay, if only for consistency with the other religious figures. Turtle Fan (talk) 08:01, May 14, 2016 (UTC) :I have no comment on the WW sub-section. I do believe the references to religious figures in BtB are sufficient, by themselves, for articles on them. On the other hand, we could do up a list called "Religious Figures Viewed in "Before the Beginning"" and have the one sentence description for each in it. Then the sub-sections could be removed from the others and Moses deleted. ML4E (talk) 15:24, May 14, 2016 (UTC) Author Again with the Fiction and Non-fiction. What's with that? ML4E (talk) 17:19, June 24, 2016 (UTC) The law codes are non fiction, the early chapters of Genesis I'm treating as allegory. Of course, Moses probably wasn't the real author, but for convenience he's treated as such.JonathanMarkoff (talk) 03:14, June 25, 2016 (UTC) :My objections about the categorization of St John apply here as well. Turtle Fan (talk) 04:25, June 25, 2016 (UTC) :Likewise. ML4E (talk) 16:09, June 25, 2016 (UTC)